Samantha Sly

“Who am I? What am I? Those are questions with so many answers they are meaningless. I have pondered those questions for decades, and never discovered an answer. Even if I knew, why do I owe you an answer, when you have not replied to my question?”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“I raised two daughters,” Ronica pointed out gently. “I know how painful victory can be sometimes.”
“Not over me,” Keffria said dully. There was self-loathing in her tone as she added, “I don’t think I ever gave you and Father a sleepless night. I was a model child, never challenging anything you told me, keeping all the rules, and earning the rewards of such virtue. Or so I thought.”
“You were my easy daughter,” Ronica conceded. “Perhaps because of that, I under-valued you. Over-looked you.” She shook her head to herself. “But in those days, Althea worried me so that I seldom had a moment to think of what was going right…”
Keffria exhaled sharply. “And you didn’t know the half of what she was doing! As her sister, I… but in all the years, it hasn’t changed. She still worries us, both of us. When she was a little girl, her willfulness and naughtiness always made her Papa’s favorite. And now that he has gone, she has disappeared, and so managed to capture your heart as well, simply by being absent.”
“Keffria!” Ronica rebuked her for the heartless words. Her sister was missing, and all she could be was jealous of Ronica worrying about her? But after a moment, Ronica asked hesitantly, “You truly feel that I give no thoughts to you, simply because Althea is gone?”
“You scarcely speak to me,” Keffria pointed out. “When I muddled the ledger books for what I had inherited, you simply took them back from me and did them yourself. You run the household as if I was not there. When Cerwin showed up on the doorstep today, you charged directly into battle, only sending Rache to tell me about it as an afterthought. Mother, were I to disappear as Althea has, I think the household would only run more smoothly. You are so capable of managing it all.” She paused and her voice was almost choked as she added, “You leave no room for me to matter.” She hastily lifted her mug and took a long sip of coffee. She stared deep into the fireplace.
Ronica found herself wordless. She drank from her own mug. She knew she was making excuses when she said, “But I was always just waiting for you to take things over from me.”
“And always so busy holding the reins that you had no time to teach me how. ‘Here, give me that, it’s easier if I just do it myself.’ How many times have you said that to me? Do you know how stupid and helpless it always made me feel?” The anger in her voice was very old.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“I know her. Not well, not in all things, but where this ship is concerned, she will not be dissuaded. She will try to take the Vivacia. That is as certain as sunrise.”
Kennit smiled faintly. “Through a wall of serpents? If she survives them, she will discover the Vivacia is no longer who she once was. I do not think I need to fear.”
“No longer who she once was,” Wintrow repeated in a whisper. His look became distant. “Are any of us?” he asked, and lowered his face into his hands.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“She turned to look at Althea with eyes the color if brandy in firelight. "Can't you feel it?" she asked her in a whisper. "Look around you. We are on the cusp. We are a coin spinning in the toss, a card fluttering in the flip, a rune chip floating in stirred water. Possibilities swarm like bees. In this day, in a moment, in a breath, the future of the world will shift course by a notch. One way or another, the coin will land ringing, the card will settle to the table, the chip will bob to the surface. The face that shows uppermost will set our days, and children to come will say, ‘That is just the way it has always been.’”
Her voice dwindled away, but Althea had the sense of the wind carrying the words around the world. Her scalp prickled. “Amber? You’re frightening me.”
Amber had turned a slow and beatific smile on her. “Am I? Then you grow wise.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny